polishing up panoramic (panotools/ptgui) pictures?

Sorry I can’t offer a specific remedy, but I can give a tip: when doing multiple panoramic exposures, lock the exposure and focus. Auto-anything can really mess up the outcome.

You may be able to open each picture separately and apply auto Levels, Contrast and Color (Image > Adjustments) and then reassemble them. Currently, the differences are quite pronounced. Or you may be able to do the same thing to the panorama, but with lightly feathered selections. Adjusting them first, prior to assembly would be a good idea. But Like JJ said, you should’ve shot everything with the exact same settings in the first place.

Peadge 🙂

wrote in message

Hi, I have been playing around with panotools and ptgui trying to make some good panoramic pictures and have run into a few problems that may or may not be fixable. I have a picture (well a few but the following is the best example) where the different pictures used to put it together are of slightly different light and/or focus, I posted it (having used enblend and w/o) so you can see what I mean: http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/vangvi eng.jpg
and another picture is (to me) almost perfect except for one part where some ripples in the water are really obvious (this isn’t the whole panoramic but I didn’t see the need to post the whole thing): http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/mekong .jpg
I am using photoshop CS (and have gimp too) and was hoping some people out there might have some suggestions on how I could salvage/repair these pictures. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

-Gaiko

Clone tool for the water?

The first one, I hope is still in separate layers. You can use the dodge & burn tools with low opacity & a big soft brush. The smudge tool is good for blending simple skys sometimes.

wrote:

Hi, I have been playing around with panotools and ptgui trying to make some good panoramic pictures and have run into a few problems that may or may not be fixable. I have a picture (well a few but the following is the best example) where the different pictures used to put it together are of slightly different light and/or focus, I posted it (having used enblend and w/o) so you can see what I mean: http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/vangvi eng.jpg
and another picture is (to me) almost perfect except for one part where some ripples in the water are really obvious (this isn’t the whole panoramic but I didn’t see the need to post the whole thing): http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/mekong .jpg
I am using photoshop CS (and have gimp too) and was hoping some people out there might have some suggestions on how I could salvage/repair these pictures. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

-Gaiko

wrote:

Hi, I have been playing around with panotools and ptgui trying to make some good panoramic pictures and have run into a few problems that may or may not be fixable. I have a picture (well a few but the following is the best example) where the different pictures used to put it together are of slightly different light and/or focus, I posted it (having used enblend and w/o) so you can see what I mean: http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/vangvi eng.jpg
and another picture is (to me) almost perfect except for one part where some ripples in the water are really obvious (this isn’t the whole panoramic but I didn’t see the need to post the whole thing): http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/mekong .jpg
I am using photoshop CS (and have gimp too) and was hoping some people out there might have some suggestions on how I could salvage/repair these pictures. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

-Gaiko

I have had some success with processing each picture to get an average brightness/contrast, and then putting them back into the panorama. As for the problem with the ripples, I see no workable solution. You might try a slight blur over the conflicting area to minimize the effect.

Oh, for the ripple problem, which I forgot to address earlier, you may be able to make a heavily feathered selection of some other ripples and copy and paste it into a new layer on top. Then use your eraser tool with a large soft brush and the opacity turned down to about 40% or so to erase the edges to get it to blend even more. Or you may add your own ripples to it using the Distort Filter.

Peadge 🙂

"Peadge" wrote in message

You may be able to open each picture separately and apply auto Levels, Contrast and Color (Image > Adjustments) and then reassemble them. Currently, the differences are quite pronounced. Or you may be able to do the same thing to the panorama, but with lightly feathered selections. Adjusting them first, prior to assembly would be a good idea. But Like JJ said, you should’ve shot everything with the exact same settings in the first place.

Peadge 🙂

wrote in message

Hi, I have been playing around with panotools and ptgui trying to make some good panoramic pictures and have run into a few problems that may or may not be fixable. I have a picture (well a few but the following is the best example) where the different pictures used to put it together are of slightly different light and/or focus, I posted it (having used enblend and w/o) so you can see what I mean: http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/vangvi eng.jpg
and another picture is (to me) almost perfect except for one part where some ripples in the water are really obvious (this isn’t the whole panoramic but I didn’t see the need to post the whole thing): http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/mekong .jpg
I am using photoshop CS (and have gimp too) and was hoping some people out there might have some suggestions on how I could salvage/repair these pictures. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

-Gaiko

Thanks for everyones comments. I will try some of the suggestions. As for locking the exposure and focus i am not sure my camera can do that (I have a dinky DiMAGE Xt), but if i am wrong (and i could be, I could have been missing the obvious) please let me know.

Cheers (and thanks)

-Gaiko

wrote:

Hi, I have been playing around with panotools and ptgui trying to

make

some good panoramic pictures and have run into a few problems that

may

or may not be fixable. I have a picture (well a few but the

following

is the best example) where the different pictures used to put it together are of slightly different light and/or focus, I posted it (having used enblend and w/o) so you can see what I mean: http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/vangvi eng.jpg
and another picture is (to me) almost perfect except for one part

where

some ripples in the water are really obvious (this isn’t the whole panoramic but I didn’t see the need to post the whole thing): http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/mekong .jpg
I am using photoshop CS (and have gimp too) and was hoping some

people

out there might have some suggestions on how I could salvage/repair these pictures. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

-Gaiko

jjs wrote

Sorry I can’t offer a specific remedy, but I can give a tip: when doing multiple panoramic exposures, lock the exposure and focus. Auto-anything can really mess up the outcome.

Agreed. Start with what will be the brightest part of the mosaic. Focus manually, and set the exposure manually to the maximum possible which doesn’t lose important highlights. Use these settings for every panel. If a darker panel contains important highlights you may need to reduce the overall exposure.

—
Hil

Peadge wrote:

Oh, for the ripple problem, which I forgot to address earlier, you may be able to make a heavily feathered selection of some other ripples and copy and paste it into a new layer on top. Then use your eraser tool with a large soft brush and the opacity turned down to about 40% or so to erase the edges to get it to blend even more. Or you may add your own ripples to it using the Distort Filter.

Or use a layer mask, selecting only the overlapping part of the image.

—
John McWilliams

Ron Hunter wrote:

I have had some success with processing each picture to get an average brightness/contrast, and then putting them back into the panorama. As for the problem with the ripples, I see no workable solution. You might try a slight blur over the conflicting area to minimize the effect.

Ripples not too difficult at all if you have enough overlap to blend them in. See Peadge’s reply above.

—
John McWilliams

Be sure to turn OFF automatic white balance.
Canon Photostich can deal with exposure differences
but not color differences.

As for ripples in the water … just make time stand still.

Chuck Forsberg www.omen.com 503-614-0430
Developer of Industrial ZMODEM(Tm) for Embedded Applications Omen Technology Inc "The High Reliability Software" 10255 NW Old Cornelius Pass Portland OR 97231 FAX 629-0665

On 9 Jan 2005 17:16:22 -0800, wrote:

Hi, I have been playing around with panotools and ptgui trying to make some good panoramic pictures and have run into a few problems that may or may not be fixable. I have a picture (well a few but the following is the best example) where the different pictures used to put it together are of slightly different light and/or focus, I posted it (having used enblend and w/o) so you can see what I mean: http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/vangvi eng.jpg
and another picture is (to me) almost perfect except for one part where some ripples in the water are really obvious (this isn’t the whole panoramic but I didn’t see the need to post the whole thing): http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/mekong .jpg
I am using photoshop CS (and have gimp too) and was hoping some people out there might have some suggestions on how I could salvage/repair these pictures. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

first off use exposure lock when taking the photos

secondly when blending photo edges use a layer mask with the gradient tool and choose foreground to transparent

rubik wrote:

use exposure lock when taking the photos

If your camera doesn’t have it, hold the shutter down halfway at the ‘main’ frame and rotate out from there to snap down.

paul wrote:

rubik wrote:

use exposure lock when taking the photos

If your camera doesn’t have it, hold the shutter down halfway at the ‘main’ frame and rotate out from there to snap down

Looking at your photo’s the biggest problem that I can see is that the center of the panorama is shooting directly into the sun. A bad idea. You should try to shoot your photo’s with the sun behind you. Pictures taken directly into the sun present numerous exposure difficulties, optical lense ghost’s (glare spots) etc. The only thing you could have done would be to set your shutter speed and or f/stop to the highest setting for the central shots and tried to tweak your shots to the sides of the center to adjust for the exposure differnce.

Richard

Richard Carlson wrote:

paul wrote:

rubik wrote:

use exposure lock when taking the photos

If your camera doesn’t have it, hold the shutter down halfway at the ‘main’ frame and rotate out from there to snap down

Looking at your photo’s the biggest problem that I can see is that the center of the panorama is shooting directly into the sun. A bad idea. You should try to shoot your photo’s with the sun behind you. Pictures taken directly into the sun present numerous exposure difficulties, optical lense ghost’s (glare spots) etc. The only thing you could have done would be to set your shutter speed and or f/stop to the highest setting for the central shots and tried to tweak your shots to the sides of the center to adjust for the exposure differnce.

Richard

It is very hard to take panos of any width without getting the sun in the picture or at least in that direction. That’s why averaging out your exposure before you set your manual setting on the camera is important.

You need to find the brightest and darkest places in your pano and get the average. Of course, you need to know if your capture device will handle such a wide dynamic range. Even with the nice dynamic range of digital cameras, they won’t usually cover enough to include bright sun and dark shadows.

The trick then is to shoot two or three panos and blend the highlights and shadows from the different exposures in Photoshop. That will give you full dynamic range. However, you can’t have moving objects in the pano.

BTW, setting your camera at the highest speed or F/stop will do nothing for pano exposure control. Setting for manual control is what you need to do.

Do you mean to tell us that you never shoot into the sun? You are missing a huge chunk of photographic possibilities by keeping the sun at your back. Learn to work with it.

Clyde

In rec.photo.digital Clyde wrote:
: BTW, setting your camera at the highest speed or F/stop will do nothing : for pano exposure control. Setting for manual control is what you need : to do.

: Do you mean to tell us that you never shoot into the sun? You are : missing a huge chunk of photographic possibilities by keeping the sun at : your back. Learn to work with it.

… and stop down as much as possible to minimize vignetting. I got screwed on that on some panos I recently put together.

-Cory

—

************************************************************ ************* * Cory Papenfuss *
* Electrical Engineering candidate Ph.D. graduate student * * Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University * ************************************************************ *************

Clyde wrote:

It is very hard to take panos of any width without getting the sun in the picture or at least in that direction. That’s why averaging out your exposure before you set your manual setting on the camera is important.
You need to find the brightest and darkest places in your pano and get the average. Of course, you need to know if your capture device will handle such a wide dynamic range. Even with the nice dynamic range of digital cameras, they won’t usually cover enough to include bright sun and dark shadows.

The trick then is to shoot two or three panos and blend the highlights and shadows from the different exposures in Photoshop. That will give you full dynamic range. However, you can’t have moving objects in the pano.
BTW, setting your camera at the highest speed or F/stop will do nothing for pano exposure control. Setting for manual control is what you need to do.

Do you mean to tell us that you never shoot into the sun? You are missing a huge chunk of photographic possibilities by keeping the sun at your back. Learn to work with it.

Time of day. Greater detail. A pano doesn’t need to cover half the horizon to be eye popping. Most of mine cover < 90˚, and when done right, are fine.

I’d suggest also setting WB before setting a series for a pano, either manually or at least in one of the presets. Sun behind makes a big diff.

That is not to say shooting into the sun doesn’t have all kinds of uses for other shots.

—
John McWilliams

Chuck Forsberg wrote:

Be sure to turn OFF automatic white balance.
Canon Photostich can deal with exposure differences
but not color differences.

As for ripples in the water … just make time stand still.
Chuck Forsberg www.omen.com 503-614-0430
Developer of Industrial ZMODEM(Tm) for Embedded Applications Omen Technology Inc "The High Reliability Software" 10255 NW Old Cornelius Pass Portland OR 97231 FAX 629-0665

For moving objects in stitched panos, there are only two things you can really do.

One is to cut out objects before you stitch, or at least before you blend. If you have half an object on a frame, delete it before you stitch. This works well for cars, people, etc. It doesn’t work too well for waves.

For waves and other less predicable objects, I find a variety of tools to help. If it’s small, the Healing Brush or Patch Tool can make it less noticeable. If it’s a more noticeable part of the picture, I will often use a soft edge selection and copy key parts to another layer. Then move the layer around to match as best I can. After merging the layers, the Healing Brush and/or Rubberstamp is needed to touch up.

This method also works pretty well for horizons that didn’t quite line up. Sometimes I have Hugin line up the key horizontal lines in the picture. This will put horizontal lines in the background or foreground a tad out of whack. This happens mostly when I have shot handheld because I wasn’t lugging around my tripod and pano head. I select part of the line area on either side, copy to a layer, move, rotate so the ends line up on each side, merge, and then touch up. This can make a line slightly slant a bit, but it’s way less noticeable than a step. This doesn’t always work if the line in question is a large or key part of the picture.

One tool that will sometimes come in very handy with objects like waves is Liquefy. You can push parts of waves around to line up with other waves. It works much better than you think it would many times.

Clyde

wrote:

Hi, I have been playing around with panotools and ptgui trying to make some good panoramic pictures and have run into a few problems that may or may not be fixable. I have a picture (well a few but the following is the best example) where the different pictures used to put it together are of slightly different light and/or focus, I posted it (having used enblend and w/o) so you can see what I mean: http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/vangvi eng.jpg
and another picture is (to me) almost perfect except for one part where some ripples in the water are really obvious (this isn’t the whole panoramic but I didn’t see the need to post the whole thing): http://www.geocities.com/gaikokujin_kyofusho/pictures/mekong .jpg
I am using photoshop CS (and have gimp too) and was hoping some people out there might have some suggestions on how I could salvage/repair these pictures. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

-Gaiko

You might want to have a look at the following tools:

1. autopano-sift (Takes a selection of files and works out their intersect points)
2. hugin (Calculates how to stitch these files together, and what sort of perspective distorts to apply to each image.)
3. enblend (Takes the hugin output and removes the colour difference. I think this is what you want, wasn’t it?)

I’m not so sure I can help you with the moving parts, other than one suggestion. When I played around with vertical panoramas (before I found hugin), I noticed that the sky was severely distorted.

1. So I started taking pictures of the sky without the foreground in the picture, at largest widescreen setting
2. Drop this behind my panorama-d images of the setting, scaling up if need be.
3. Make sure each panorama image has an alpha channel and remove the sky from them.
4. Apply a Gaussian blur or unsharp mask across the background sky to remove any scaling up artefacts.

Maybe if you took a wide-angle picture of your moving elements, you could do something similar, but with the moving elements at the front?

Joal